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Apr. 7th, 2010 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janradderIt's an odd feeling to be standing in a crowd and waiting to see a band play when you realize that not only are you the oldest person there, but you're more than likely the only person there whose age is north of twenty-three. It's a little like being the dad who accompanies his son to his first concert. He stands around with kids less than half his age looking uncool and feeling out of place as he realizes that the youth of today have their own culture and behaviors completely separate from his.
That was me Monday night at the 7th Street Entry when I went to see Titus Andronicus. And that feeling only increased when the band took the stage and started playing their first song.
In case you've never heard Titus Andronicus, they sound a lot like Bruce Springsteen if he were born in 1985 and raised on a steady diet of hardcore punk and Henry Miller. They rage, they scream, they spew out sloppy chunks of melted asphalt ripped straight from the Garden State Parkway that they kick up as they barrel down the highway doing eighty and leaving long streaks of paint and metal each time they sideswipe the barriers along the median. At the Entry, the band's singer stood onstage wearing his heart not on his sleeve but on his chest in the form of a hand-made Black Flag T-shirt, and with the first chords and the first pounding drumbeats, they churned out a raging punk rock assault that stormed off the stage to shatter against the back walls of the club. Which is why as they played all I could think was who could not want to slam to this music?
Apparently, the answer was the kids around me. They stood anchored to one spot, staring at the floor and shaking their heads and like spastic rag dolls. Inexplicably, they'd stop one by one, even though the band was still playing, and stare at the musicians for a few moments before going into another seizure. Occasionally, someone would accidently knock his neighbor with a flying arm or head, and then move over a little so as not to do it again. I started to pogo and bump into the people next to me, and when I did, the kids around me gave me a look that said I'd crossed some sort of mutually agreed upon line. Apparently, accidentally nailing the guy behind you with your flailing head is okay but intentionally bumping into the people around you as you jump around is being a jackass.
So I listened to the band as I avoided the jerking limbs of the kid in front front of me, and I watched the audience around me. Each one stood apart from the rest, engulfed in his or her own personal moment, shaking and trashing to the music. It was as if every kid were wrapped in his or her own pod so that nothing else existed beyond its walls. Which, in a way I realized, is kind of how most people go through their lives nowadays.
We've got cell phones and iPods and laptops, and through them we supposedly connect into a larger world. Instead, we exist apart from one another, chatting on the phone as we ignore the cashier who rings up our purchases, listening to headphones to shut out the lives around us, reading news feeds, Facebook updates, and blogs within a virtual world while we ignore the one outside. Like the kids at the show, we dance alone in our cocoons, oblivious to the people around us unless one of them knocks into us and breaks our illusion of solitude.
It might come across as sounding like an old fart reminiscing about the old days when I say this, but so what: Shows were better when kids slam danced. And here's why -- when there was slam dancing, even if you weren't there in that pit, there was no way you could ignore the people around you. You helped pick up the kid next to you that some asshole had knocked over after you shoved the asshole back into the pit. You watched for the stage divers not only so they wouldn't accidently kick you in the head when they jumped but also so you could catch them before they hit the floor. You pogoed with the crowd, bouncing off your neighbors, feeling the sheer exhilaration and joy of being alive. Going to a show was a shared, communal experience, regardless of whether you knew a single person there, and for however long a band was on the stage, you became part of a larger world.
Maybe I'm wrong -- maybe the kids at the Titus Andronicus show did feel like they were connected to one another, and maybe just I don't get it because I'm not eighteen anymore -- but I don't think so. Then again, most generations think they had it better than the younger ones. Still, I can't help thinking our lives might be richer if there was a little more slam dancing in them, if only because it would force us look up from the floor and see the world around us for a moment. At least then we'd know for sure if we really were missing out on something or not.
That was me Monday night at the 7th Street Entry when I went to see Titus Andronicus. And that feeling only increased when the band took the stage and started playing their first song.
In case you've never heard Titus Andronicus, they sound a lot like Bruce Springsteen if he were born in 1985 and raised on a steady diet of hardcore punk and Henry Miller. They rage, they scream, they spew out sloppy chunks of melted asphalt ripped straight from the Garden State Parkway that they kick up as they barrel down the highway doing eighty and leaving long streaks of paint and metal each time they sideswipe the barriers along the median. At the Entry, the band's singer stood onstage wearing his heart not on his sleeve but on his chest in the form of a hand-made Black Flag T-shirt, and with the first chords and the first pounding drumbeats, they churned out a raging punk rock assault that stormed off the stage to shatter against the back walls of the club. Which is why as they played all I could think was who could not want to slam to this music?
Apparently, the answer was the kids around me. They stood anchored to one spot, staring at the floor and shaking their heads and like spastic rag dolls. Inexplicably, they'd stop one by one, even though the band was still playing, and stare at the musicians for a few moments before going into another seizure. Occasionally, someone would accidently knock his neighbor with a flying arm or head, and then move over a little so as not to do it again. I started to pogo and bump into the people next to me, and when I did, the kids around me gave me a look that said I'd crossed some sort of mutually agreed upon line. Apparently, accidentally nailing the guy behind you with your flailing head is okay but intentionally bumping into the people around you as you jump around is being a jackass.
So I listened to the band as I avoided the jerking limbs of the kid in front front of me, and I watched the audience around me. Each one stood apart from the rest, engulfed in his or her own personal moment, shaking and trashing to the music. It was as if every kid were wrapped in his or her own pod so that nothing else existed beyond its walls. Which, in a way I realized, is kind of how most people go through their lives nowadays.
We've got cell phones and iPods and laptops, and through them we supposedly connect into a larger world. Instead, we exist apart from one another, chatting on the phone as we ignore the cashier who rings up our purchases, listening to headphones to shut out the lives around us, reading news feeds, Facebook updates, and blogs within a virtual world while we ignore the one outside. Like the kids at the show, we dance alone in our cocoons, oblivious to the people around us unless one of them knocks into us and breaks our illusion of solitude.
It might come across as sounding like an old fart reminiscing about the old days when I say this, but so what: Shows were better when kids slam danced. And here's why -- when there was slam dancing, even if you weren't there in that pit, there was no way you could ignore the people around you. You helped pick up the kid next to you that some asshole had knocked over after you shoved the asshole back into the pit. You watched for the stage divers not only so they wouldn't accidently kick you in the head when they jumped but also so you could catch them before they hit the floor. You pogoed with the crowd, bouncing off your neighbors, feeling the sheer exhilaration and joy of being alive. Going to a show was a shared, communal experience, regardless of whether you knew a single person there, and for however long a band was on the stage, you became part of a larger world.
Maybe I'm wrong -- maybe the kids at the Titus Andronicus show did feel like they were connected to one another, and maybe just I don't get it because I'm not eighteen anymore -- but I don't think so. Then again, most generations think they had it better than the younger ones. Still, I can't help thinking our lives might be richer if there was a little more slam dancing in them, if only because it would force us look up from the floor and see the world around us for a moment. At least then we'd know for sure if we really were missing out on something or not.
